


Life

by wynnebat



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Abortion, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Break Up, Consent Issues, Discrimination, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-08
Updated: 2018-07-08
Packaged: 2019-06-07 07:59:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15214652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wynnebat/pseuds/wynnebat
Summary: The one where Peter's an alpha, Stiles is an omega, and it all falls apart.





	Life

**Author's Note:**

> Okay, this is totally issuefic instead of fun porny a/b/o, but I just had some thoughts about the gray area between “no babe ur body is yours 100%” and “evil controlling alpha”.

Stiles asks the right questions when he and Peter start hooking up. He can’t afford not to. He’d been wary at first—there was always an element of danger in getting mixed up with an alpha—but Peter is charming and clever and completely out of place in the shitty bar they’d met in. Later, Stiles learns that he’d been looking for his nephew, a man whose name Peter always says in a way that implies an exasperated sigh behind the word each time. Stiles asks him about his family in a casual but pointed way, and Peter sees through it with a laugh.

“I’m not a rut-mad teenager,” Peter tells him. “I’m not dating you for your scent or your uterus. If I wanted kids, I would’ve had them years ago. I’ve never met anyone who’s changed my mind.”

“We’re not dating,” Stiles splutters. He’s not dating an alpha, okay? Not to be a dick about it, but even Stiles’ dating profile states he’s only interested in betas and fellow omegas. He likes sex with alphas—loves the way it can scratch an itch like nothing else can—but alphas are so often knotheaded assholes. They have the world stacked in their favor and Stiles has spent his life trying to chip away at that. In his late twenties, he’s old for an unattached omega, and the idea of giving up his job and having babies with an alpha sounds about as good as a lobotomy. He’d be fired if he gets pregnant on the assumption that he needs to take care of himself and prepare for the brats.

Peter raises an eyebrow. “Aren’t we?”

“We’re two people who enjoy each other’s company. And by that I mean each other’s dicks,” Stiles says, but he doesn’t fight it when Peter loops their fingers together as they walk.

Give an inch, Peter takes a mile, and Stiles hates that he likes it. Peter’s courteous and giving in bed, matches Stiles snark for snark outside of it, and has no interest suggestions from idiots who tell him to keep his omega in line. Strangers, usually, since Peter doesn’t have much family to get on his case about properly settling down and Stiles’ dad has long given up on Stiles being a proper omega.

It’s nice. Good. A little perfect.

Stiles still gets pissed off with the world sometimes. Worse is when he’s tired and overworked trying to prove that he can be as good as any alpha or beta in the department, and he goes home sad instead of angry. He can rant as much as he wants when he’s angry, but when all the shit he has to deal with actually gets him down, those conversations are quiet, soft ones in the middle of the night when he doesn’t have to look at Peter’s face. It’s fucking ironic that Peter’s alpha scent comforts him while Stiles recounts how the incompetent asshole who started working a year after Stiles just got promoted, while Stiles was just told that he wasn’t a good fit for the job.

Having Peter around helps. It’s not just his dick, unfortunately, although it is a nice one. It’s having someone who argues with him but stands with him on omega politics, it’s having someone to look forward to spending his weekends with, it’s the way Peter manipulates the hell out of other people but doesn’t try with Stiles.

It’s the way Peter kisses him on a lazy afternoon and says, “Have you thought about taking our fuckbuddy status to the next level?”

Stiles gives him a suspicious look, brain still foggy with arousal. “What level is that?”

“Live-in fuckbuddies,” Peter says, all innocence and charm. “Casually, of course.”

“I hate you,” Stiles groans.

“I don’t,” Peter replies. It’s the closest he’s ever gotten to the words, but before Stiles can panic, Peter’s kissing him again.

A week later, Stiles has the presence of mind to be grateful that he hadn’t moved in with Peter before it all went to hell. He’d been feeling weird lately, off-balance, and the second Scott says there’s a difference in Stiles’ scent, he goes for the pregnancy aisle of the store. Smiling omegas stare at him from glossy products and advertisements. The cashier wishes him good luck when she sees the pregnancy test. Stiles is in too much shock to say that the only luck he needs is a negative result.

Luck fails him, of course.

It’s probably inevitable.

The perils of fucking an alpha regularly.

Christ, it’s been almost a year since he and Peter first met.

Stiles had been with alphas occasionally before Peter, but nothing this long-term. Nothing that threatened to give proof to the fact that birth control isn’t a hundred percent effective, especially when Stiles’ body is working against him, syncing his heats up with Peter’s ruts like the traitorous baby-crazy thing it is. Stiles stays inside his apartment until all his panic has been replaced with determination.

Peter’s scent is different too when Stiles approaches him, subtly so but enough that Stiles should’ve noticed. The difference is a match for Stiles’. He’d gotten complacent. He’d gotten stupid. He’d—

“You already know,” Stiles realizes. His boyfriend—not his alpha, because while a part of him likes the thought, the rest of him shies away from the ownership Peter could have over him if Peter were just a little less decent—is observant. Peter doesn’t miss much.

“I noticed the change in your smell a few days ago,” Peter admits, setting down the wine glasses.

Dinner is going to go cold, a part of Stiles realizes. “Were you planning to tell me? Or just wait until I started showing to exclaim in surprise?”

“You would’ve figured it out long before then,” Peter replies. He fiddles with the wine opener for a moment, then sets it down. “I was trying to come to terms with it.”

“There isn’t anything to come to terms with.” It’s stupid, to feel uncomfortable with the fact that Peter already knew, but this whole situation is uncomfortable enough.

Stiles likes kids in theory. Scott has two of them with an omega he met in college. Kira is sharp as knives if you get on her bad side, but she’s happy with her lot in life outside of some of the more irritating restrictions placed on omegas. Her kids are great, her house is as clean as it gets with two kids under five, and her alpha is happy. Stiles likes her life from the outside, but he’s never wanted it. He doesn’t yearn to understand the way children change your life, doesn’t feel like he’s missing out on a beautiful human experience. He’d once thought that maybe it would come later, this omega urge that everyone won’t shut up about, but it hasn’t snuck up on him.

Unlike the situation society’s boxed him into, this particular situation is temporary. It doesn’t have to ripple throughout his whole life. His coworkers haven’t even noticed yet. Stiles is pretty much in the clear. Even if they do notice, unbonded alphas and omegas pairs do have the right to mutually terminate a pregnancy. All he needs to do is get Peter into the passenger seat of his car, get their asses to a clinic, and cry all over the doctor about how it was a mistake and it’s too early and they’re not even bonded yet and what would their families say.

But the expression on Peter’s face isn’t the determined, we’ll-take-care-of-this one he usually has when there’s a problem to solve. Instead, he looks uncomfortable, worried.

“It’s not your fault,” Stiles says, just in case that’s the issue. “Or mine. Or anyone’s. It’s just...” He shrugs. “Life.”

“Life,” Peter repeats, lips thin. “I expected to be horrified if it ever happened. I told you my opinions on children.”

“Loud and clear.”

“I’ve never wanted them for myself. They’re noisy and messy, and I thought I’d never want to deal with it, but somehow I can’t muster up the same disdain over what I know at this stage is only a grouping of cells.” Peter motions to the area of Stiles’ stomach, so many emotions fighting for his expression that he just looks miserable. “I lost nearly my entire family six years ago and every time I think of you terminating the pregnancy, I’m confronted with the fact that I could’ve had a piece of what I lost back instead. A tiny human being that might smile like my mother used to or become obsessed with go competitions like Talia. They’d be half of you, too, and I know you like to deny it, but I like you, Stiles. Love you, even. I know it’s not what you want to hear, but I want to know if there’s any part of you that would be willing to meet me halfway.”

Peter doesn’t try to touch him, doesn’t try to kiss him, just stays there half a room away. Which is good, because Stiles...

“I love you, too,” Stiles says before he goes for the door. It’s all he can give Peter at the moment.

He loves Peter. Despite his denial, his rationalizing, blaming it on pheromones, Stiles knows he fell in love with him a long time ago. Stiles can see himself giving up the ghost of his commitment issues and giving into it freely. He’d already planned on moving in with Peter and it wasn’t to be a tier 2 fuckbuddy. But there’s an ocean between moving in together and the rest of it all. Stiles thinks about saying yes, getting pulled into the pregnancy and bonding and all those things that maybe he just hasn’t realized he wants. Maybe there’s some deep, deep, deep part of him that does want all this and he just has to continue being pregnant to unlock it. Maybe it’ll click and he’ll feel all rosy and fulfilled, his purpose in life finally found.

He considers it, but he doesn’t believe it.

Stiles spends three days trying to find a nice way of breaking it to Peter, who asks for more time. Stiles gives it, but every day he is aware of the time slipping past. They talk more about children than Stiles had ever talked in his high school omega-geared classes. It’s not that he doesn’t know what to do with children. He hasn’t yet managed to wipe high school from his memory, so there’s four years of quizzes on how to breastfeed and having to take care of fake babies. He could be a decent parent.

He wonders if the kid would have his eyes or Peter’s. The color of its’ hair, the set of its’ chin. He’d never met Peter’s family before they died and left him only with a nephew Peter couldn’t seem to decide if he hated or loved.

When Peter finally asks about adoption, Stiles realizes he’s never going to hear Peter’s agreement. The window for a safe and legal procedure is running out. He asks just one time. When he hears Peter’s no, Stiles spends an hour crying on Scott and Kira, because there goes a legal procedure. It’s unfair. It’s life. Life, that’s the problem, fuck.

He stops answering Peter’s calls, doesn’t check his text messages.

It makes sense that a week later, Peter finds him in his favorite bar. Peter’s tenacious like that. Peter looks between Stiles and Stiles’ drink like he doesn’t know what to say. Stiles doesn’t know, either. It feels like a dick move to try to tell Peter that a couple cells aren’t going to replace his dead family.

“Miscarriage,” Stiles says. He can’t look into Peter’s eyes for very long.

Peter’s looking at him like Stiles has shattered his whole world. Like Peter might decide to do something with those shards. It’s why Stiles went with plausible deniability over honesty.

It’s been a long time since he’s thought he needs to protect himself from Peter. It fucking sucks.

“Right. Miscarriage,” Peter says. “Are you alright?”

“I’m going to be fine.”

“You always are.”

Fuck, Peter. Stiles had really liked the idea of spending his life with Peter. And now it’s... this. “You want a drink?”

“Are you seriously asking me that?”

“I’m an insensitive asshole,” Stiles says. Christ, what had he said to Peter, way back when? _I care too much about my job. The sound of a baby crying makes me want to make sure it’s got someone who’s not me to take care of it and get the hell out of dodge_. “Selfish, too.”

“We all are.” Peter turns on his heel. Stiles thinks that’s going to be the last of it, but then he says, “Goodbye, Stiles.”

 _Can’t even look at me, huh,_ Stiles thinks. But it’s better this way. Stiles can hardly bear to look at him in turn.

It’s a good night as any to get drunk.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading!
> 
> I'm also on tumblr as [crownwithoutstones](https://crownwithoutstones.tumblr.com/) (new blog).


End file.
